Free Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. by Doug Dandridge

to the floor.
    Hawk swept the
room with his suit sensors, stopping on the severed head of Ensign Danvers
laying on the floor.
    “Medic,” he
yelled into his com link, as another Marine came into the room behind him.  “We
need a medic here, right now.”
    It only took
moments for the Naval rating to get there, wearing the medium combat armor that
the Fleet favored for shipboard duty.  The woman knelt down by the severed
head, looking it over quickly, pulling out a cryo bag and arranging it on the
floor, then placing the head into the bag and pulling the tab that ordered the
container to shrink to the size of the object it was holding.  Instantaneously
the container dropped its internal temperature to a hundred degrees below
freezing.
    “Are you going
to preserve the body as well?” asked the Sergeant, pointing toward the remains
in the chair.
    The Medic
hurried over and ran her scanners over the lower torso and the legs.  After a
moment she shook her head.  “There aren’t enough living cells here to bother
with.  It will have to be a complete rebuild from the head.”
    And that will
take a good four months of regrowth , thought the Gunny, just happy that the
person they had come to rescue was at least to be listed among the recoverable
dead.  He looked over at the aliens they had captured, standing under the guns
of several of his men.
    “We’ve got her,
LT,” he sent over the com while the Medic secured the container that held all
that was now the Ensign.  “Tell the Old Lady that we got her.”
    *     *     *
    What an awful
ordeal she went through , thought Captain Albright, as she wondered what it
must have been like to have her head taken off.  She’s going to have
nightmares for the rest of her life, if she doesn’t opt for a selective mind
wipe.  But that would, of course, be the Ensign’s choice.  Only people
given certain sentences by the courts could be wiped against their will.  But
she didn’t see why the young woman, once she was back in the realm of the
living, would elect to keep memories like those.
    “That’s the good
news, ma’am,” said Lt. J’rrantar, standing in the holo in his singular battle
armor.  The huge Phlistaran’s faceplate was raised, and his toothy snout was
set in a grimace.
    “And the bad?”
    “The aborigines
stole all of the ready weapons in the shuttle,” said the Marine Officer. 
“Thirty-three particle beam rifles, a pair of heavy crew served lasers, and a
good dozen shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile launchers.  Those are what I
worry about the most, ma’am.  They could use them to knock down a couple of
shuttles if they employ them carefully.”
    “Will they know
how to use them?” asked the Captain, her brow furrowing in worry.  “They have
to be a thousand years or more advanced on their tech level.”
    “They have
shoulder fired missiles,” said the Marine, shaking his large head.  “They’ll
figure them out.  And, even worse, some of the units have holographic manuals
built in.”
    “Any chance of
finding them?”
    “We’ll may pick
up something when they’re activated,” said the Lieutenant.  “But remember, we
built them to be hard to track in combat.  Not impossible.  They will have an
electronic signature that will be traceable for several hundred meters.  We
just have to be within those couple of hundred meters.”
    “And their
range?”
    “They can hit a
target they are in line of sight of at five hundred kilometers,” said
J’rrantar.  “Maybe further with some luck.”
    Bad luck for
us , thought the Captain, imagining her shuttles being knocked from the sky
by one of the fanatical aliens that were opposing her people’s efforts to save
them.
    “I want every
weapon we have to have a tracer placed in it,” she finally said after a
moment’s thought.  “I know that defeats the purpose of all the electronic
stealth we have built into them, but I’m more concerned about them being stolen
than